What’s better than granola where you choose the ingredients? Do you want sweet, filled with chocolate-covered espresso beans or gummy bears, or healthy, filled with dried fruit and nuts? The people behind MixMyGranola what you to decide for yourself…choose your granola base, add whatever ingredients you want, and they ship it to your door. We decided [...]

One of the best parts of making your own chicken stock is the layer of fat that settles to the top after it’s chilled. This yellow layer of fat is also known as Schmaltz and to quote Sienfeld, “Its gold, Jerry, Gold!” After the soup has chilled you can skim the fat and save it [...]

Making homemade chicken stock can seem like more of a chore than it is actually is. There are tons of recipes and techniques out there, all trying to create a clear, strong stock. It is very easy to over think chicken soup making.

During the winter months our local farmer’s market shuts down. Star Hollow Farm, however, still has CSA pickup and some basics like their farm fresh eggs. The eggs they have are amazing and so much better than anything you can get in the stores, including fancy Whole Foods eggs. The eggs I get from them do [...]

If you look at the right hand side of the page you will see an icon for FoodBuzz. They are our Buds. I am a FoodBuzz Featured Publisher, which means they think I am cool and they send us fun things. In return I have a FoodBuzz badge on Cookography because I think they are [...]

I came across a great Japanese market on my walk home from work. Hana Japanese Market recently opened at 17th and U Street in Northwest Washington, DC. It is a great little market that carries almost any Japanese product you could need. They mostly have dry or frozen goods, but they also get local, fresh [...]

One of the BigTree Farms products I picked up in Bali was a box of Muntok White Peppercorns. White and black peppercorns are the same thing. The black peppercorns are unripened berries that are cooked briefly and then allowed to dry. The white peppercorns come from fully ripe berries that are soaked in water for [...]

Can you guess what this is? Give up? Well, it is a grain of salt from Bali! The salt is shaped like a little hollow pyramid. I zoomed in 60x with a toy digital microscope I have to get a better look. Below is a picture of the salt grain, but only zoomed in 10x. You can [...]

Sea salt is the first product that Big Tree Farms began exporting from Bali. The sea salt is produced using traditional methods that involve lots of labor-intensive steps. They do a great job explaining what goes into making the salt on their website. The process involves the creation of a salty brine which is then [...]

In Washington, DC there are a bunch of places to find products from Big Tree Farms. There is only one place in Bali, however, where you can get their products. A little challenge makes everything more fun though! I had a free afternoon so I got a car and headed 45 minutes north to the [...]

When we travel we always try to find interesting food items. Our Vermont cheese tour is an extreme example of that and my recent trip to Bali was no exception. My best “find” was Big Tree Farms–and the funny thing is that I had already discovered their products at my local Whole Foods. Big Tree Farms [...]

Sugar plums are a kind of confection and a delicious variety of plums. I have never tried the confection, but this weekend we picked up a couple handfuls of the plums. They were so ripe, the felt like they were about to burst. Sugar plums are a lot smaller than normal plums and look like [...]

Grafton Village Cheese Shop 33 Townshend Road Grafton, VT 05146 800-472-3866 Daniel’s House Café 92 Main St Grafton, VT 05146 800-843-1801 Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour Our visit a couple of years ago to Grafton Village Cheese Company is what really planted the seed in our minds for our ‘08 Cheese Tour. Grafton Cheddar defines what good cheddar should [...]

Long Trail Brewery Junction of Route 100a and 4 Bridgewater Corners, VT 05035 Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour You know there is something special about a place when the employees stick around after hours. It does help if that place is a brewery…but it is still a good sign. We stopped by Long Trail [...]

Frog City Cheese 106 Messer Hill Road Plymouth Notch, VT 05056 802-672-3650 Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour The are too many good cheese places to visit in Vermont. We tried to make it to as many as possible and unfortunately some of the ones we made it to closed before we got there. OK, so [...]

King Arthur Flour Store 135 Route 5 South Norwich, Vermont 05055 phone: 802.649.3361 Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour Once you get into baking you come across King Arthur Flour and give it a try. Depending on where you buy it, it is only a little bit more expensive than regular flour and always delivers great [...]

Bufala di Vermont 2749 Church Hill Road S. Woodstock, VT 05071 802-457-4540 Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour Mozzarella is a soft cheese that is best fresh. I got water buffalo mozzarella before from Vace that was flown in from Italy. It was very tasty and creamy but it lacked the “freshness” of really fresh mozzarella. [...]

Crowley Cheese 14 Crowley Lane Healdville, VT 05758 Phone: (802)259-2340 Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour I met one of the most amazing cheese makers on our tour…and I totally forgot to ask his name. This is what separates us bloggers from real reporters. Every now and then we miss some details. Luckily he was wearing [...]

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour Helmut’s Strudel Shop in Rockport, MA has amazing coffee cake muffins, among other things, including coffee and cheese strudel. Every time we go to Rockport we make a trip to Bearskin Neck for some “penny” candy, salt water taffy and coffee cake muffins. Sometime we even [...]

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour I like old people candy. There, I’ve said it. Don’t give me any sour flavored, blue colored, gummy candy treats. Instead give me black licorice or better yet some NECCO wafers. What better to do, when in Boston, than go to the New England Confectionary Company – [...]

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour There are two kinds of fried clams in this world–fried clam strips and fried clams with bellies. The first kind is a flavorless dried out, stringy, piece of clam meat. The second kind is moist, tender and full of ocean flavor. For the past couple of [...]

I had a good haul from the farmers’ market a couple of weeks ago, but I have been pretty lazy about getting the photos online. I should really work on streamlining the process so things don’t sit around. Anyhow, without further ado, I present…Farmers’ Market! Tri-Colored Carrots Garlic Greens Garlic Scapes

It is about time that ice cubes shaped up and started living up to their name. For far too long that lazy ice “cube” has been oddly trapezoidal in shape and explodes into little shards of ice when it is released from its tray. Here to put an end to all that is the Tovolo [...]

Chive blossoms can do more than pretty up your place, they can also pretty up your plate. The flowers on chive plants are edible and we found a bunch of them for sale a few weeks ago at our farmers’ market. I used most of the chives, but kept the ones with blossoms in a [...]

Our farmers’ market is finally back in full swing. Right now it is mostly young greens and root vegetables, but they also have some hot house tomatoes that beat the cardboard versions we were getting from Safeway. Purple Scallions – Deep Purple Bunching (I think)

Ramps are a trendy seasonal delight. They are a miniature version of a leek and taste like the cross between garlic and an onion. What makes them unique (and therefore trendy) is they can not be cultivated and instead have to be found in the wild. Unlike leeks, the green part is tender and can [...]

This Saturday is the Kentucky Derby, which marks the official start of “Minty Drink Season.” There are some big players in Minty Drink Season, namely the Mint Julep, the Mojito and the Caipirinha. All of these drinks of course rely heavily on mint, but what mint to use? Mint is actually not one particular plant, [...]

This has to be my favorite find from the farmer’s market–purple popcorn that is still on the cob. The cobs were miniature and bunched together so they made for a nice little decoration on our table. After a couple months of serving as decoration, it was time for the corn to serve its true purpose…as [...]

I just got these wonderful beets from the local farmer’s market. They were fresh out of the ground and still had the greens attached and a little dirt on them. We roasted them and they were good!

I am not quite sure when beets are in season, but I just picked up two massive ones from the farmer’s market. We roasted both of them in oven, and they came out great. Roasting actually make the beets a lot easier to handle. They are really easy to peel after roasting and they give [...]

This year’s Ataulfo mangos just hit Whole Foods. The texture of these mangos are not as delicate as the champagne mangos, but they are full of flavor. We used our OXO Mango Pitter, and it is still making the cut. The slicer makes it really simple to cut up a mango. It may leave a [...]

Pimenton is a smoked version of paprika, which is ground up red bell peppers. It isn’t really something new… all you cool kids out there have been playing with this for a while. It used to be sort of hard to find smoked paprika. Luckily for us lazy guys, it is becoming increasingly easier to [...]

After reading this article in the Washington Post, I started paying attention to whether I was buying Chinese garlic or not. I had a bit of luck when my local farmer’s market was in season. Towards the end of the season they always had locally grown hardneck garlic. I had no luck, however, finding anything [...]

We brought back eight bottles of wine from Argentina, which is four more than you are allowed duty free. All you have to do is declare it, and they may (but most likely not) ask you to pay a tax. The tax is only 3 percent, I think, and on $15 bottles, it doesn’t add [...]

What if I was to tell you that there a tomato that was fuzzy? Well it is true! I got a few of them yesterday. The are small, yellow and have a fuzzy skin. We simply sliced them and added a little salt and olive oil. They have a mild flavor, but they contrast nicely [...]

Last weekend we couldn’t help but pick-up a carton of these adorable baby squash. They were tiny, about the size of a finger. To cook them, I cut off the stem and then halved them. We heated up a pan over medium heat with olive oil and then cooked them, cut side down, until they [...]

It seems like the new cool thing to do on the web is make your own butter… and not just regular butter, but cultured butter. In order to make butter you have to take a bunch of cream and then whip it until the butter fat separates from the liquid in the cream. In order [...]

United Airline’s in plane magazine Hemispheres has some great food writing every now and then. In the March ‘07 issue had a great article from Bill Marsano, a James Beard winner, on how to stock your home bar. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find it online… luckily for you I will summarize what he has [...]

When Carolyn and I were in Edinburgh we visited a shop named Demijohn that sold liquids. They had everything from olive oil, to vinegar, to liquors. You pick out one of their cool bottles and they will fill it with a liquid of your choice. We got a raspberry vinegar, an olive oil and sloe [...]

I got another hall from the farm stand. Lots of good stuff week including the most excellent blueberries above! Ginger Gold Apples – A cross between a Golden Delicious and a Pippin. It is spicy sweet with a great texture. Sugar Plums! These are so sweet and juicy… They were almost ripe, after ripening they tasted almost tropical.

Sea Salt has been making it big lately. It is lovingly added to menus as an extra flourish. It is add in recipes to make them seem more sophisticated. This is all because it is being touted by Food Snobs and culinary band wagon wanting to make sure they are part of the latest. This [...]

There is no such thing as a bad mango… or atleast I haven’t found one yet. However some mangos end up being better than others. Champange mangos are of the variety Ataulfo. Like all mangos of that variety they are free from the stringy, fiberglass-like, fibers that other mangos have. The texture of a ripe [...]

The Grafton Village Cheese Company produces some of the best cheddars you can find. Their cheddar is so good it makes Cracker Barrel and Cabot seem like Velvetta. Carolyn and I stopped by their factory over Christmas and got to try a number of their cheeses. Vermont is known for its cheese. In the days before [...]

A lot can be said about meat in general. It may seem like Chicken and Beef have nothing in common, but they actually share a lot… because their Meat! I am can’t say I am an expert in this area, but Harold McGee is! I have gleaned this information from his excellent book On Food and [...]